Well, that was a fucking great idea, wasn’t it now? …And I hope to God that the ChiComs are as apprehensive as we are over this new state of affairs. It’s just as much their fault as it is our political “elites’.”

Marvelous: “One of the most serious potential breaches of national security identified so far by the intelligence community inside Hillary Rodham Clinton’s private emails involves the relaying of classified information concerning the movement of North Korean nuclear assets, which was obtained from spy satellites.” Admittedly, the Chinese probably already knew about the aforementioned movement of those nuclear assets, given that North Korea is their particular little embarrassment/headache. But now the Chinese know what we know about North Korean nuclear asset movements; worse, they have a somewhat better idea of what we don’t know about North Korean nuclear asset movements. Lucky break that we’re not currently fighting a proxy war with the ChiComs, huh? – Which is something that we’ve done twice, within living memory.

I mean, can we not pretend, here? This was an epic screw-up by the former Secretary of State. It is the kind of screw-up that the GOP can and will viciously and cheerfully exploit in the general election, should Hillary Clinton be the nominee. And before you ask ‘So what?’ let me remind you that in every election we see a certain number of defectors from one party to the other. I suspect that, should Hillary Clinton be the nominee, the percentage of Republican defectors will end up being quite remarkably small.

Making a dramatic statement in Korean relations, Gloria Steinem and other prominent women on Wednesday announced their intention to walk across the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea to call for reunification.

[snip]

Organizers of the effort called WomenCrossDMZ.org on Wednesday said they hope for 30 women, including two Nobel Peace laureates, to cross from North Korea to South Korea on May 24, which is International Women’s Day for Disarmament.

Voicing its agreement with the angry will of the people, a special military tribunal of the DPRK Ministry of State Security was held against Moe Lane, traitor for all ages.

The world public will never forget the malignant slanders uttered by Lane, the enemy of the party and the revolution and a servant of the fascist clique of South Korea.

[snip]

Lane is a half-baked person whose remarks often stun audience as they reveal utter ignorance, does not know even elementary diplomatic etiquette and lacks diplomatic ability, and set out to undermine the party’s monolithic leadership system and single-minded unity.

(Hypothetical) North Korean missiles ain’t going to hit DC or Chicago, and that’s no doubt the important thing:

The Pentagon will request $9.16 billion for missile defense programs for the 2014 fiscal year that begins Oct. 1, about $550 million less than this year’s $9.71 billion, according to internal budget figures obtained by Bloomberg News.

The missile defense proposal scheduled to be released April 10 is part of a $526.6 billion defense budget President Barack Obama will propose, according to government officials familiar with the budget plan who asked not to be named discussing it in advance.

Via Hot Air. …Oh, just read the whole thing: Ed Morrissey made the same comments that I would, including the bit about how a nuke can really negatively impact an environment impact statement. All I can add is that it’s a good thing that hijacked, Soviet-era plutonium is apparently not something that the Russian Mafia is insane enough to sell in job lots*… because that’s probably the major reason why the nuclear club doesn’t include Kimjonilland right now…

Moe Lane

*Or else they’re just selling it to countries that have no intention of nuking Russia anyway.

Ever notice that this administration is only lightning-fast when it comes to shifting blame when things don’t work out perfectly? They practically left a vapor trail in their zeal to anonymously accuse the US military of being responsible for our tense situation with North Korea:

So, it’s the Navy’s fault that the U.S.-North Korea spat has gone so far?

That’s the apparent message from senior administration officials who, according to the Wall Street Journal on Thursday, said that they had long planned to send B-52s, B-2 stealth bombers, and F-22 fighters to the Korean Peninsula as part of preplanned wargames with South Korea, but that they had not planned the recent deployment of Navy destroyers.

Last weekend, the U.S. ordered two guided-missile destroyers to the Western Pacific — the U.S.S. John S. McCain and the U.S.S. Decatur — to provide additional defense against North Korean ballistic missiles.

We forget that, reservation-of-deliberate-weirdos* aside, Austin is the capital of Texas. And if there’s a place that’s pretty much the antithesis of North Korea, it’s Texas.

Which doesn’t make North Korea any less insane for targeting Austin with missiles that it doesn’t actually have. And here I was, hoping that the new King of North Korea might not be as crazy as the rest of his dynasty…

“I say to you againe, doe not call up Any that you can not put downe.”

I would feel more sympathy towards George Stephanopoulos here if only it weren’t for the fact that Dennis Rodman’s invincible ignorance and wrong-headed thinking on North Korea – nay: objective reality – is directly attributable to a media mindset that George Stephanopoulos has spent his entire career encouraging and I’ve spent my entire career fighting against*.

When [George] Stephanopoulos went after [Dennis] Rodman on not talking about North Korean death camps he said, “We do the same things here.”

A dumbfounded Stephanopoulos replied, “We have prison camps here in the United States?”

“This is all politics right? He don’t want to do that,” said Rodman. (more…)

Seriously, this crap makes a lot more sense if you stop trying to fit it into a 19th century worldview and just go back all the way back to Charlemagne: short version is, North Korean ‘researchers’ have conveniently found a so-called ‘unicorn lair’ from ancient times that just happens to be right outside their capital. Believe it or not, this is possibly not just about North Korea getting some bizarre self-scored style points over North Korea, and I’m suggesting that because of this:

“Supposedly, this unicorn was ridden by none other than King Tongmyong, founder of the Koguryo Kingdom (277 B.C.-A.D. 668).”

I’m an optimist, so possibly I am reading too much into this; but it does seem sometimes like North Korea is trying to go from Marxism to actual feudalism. Which is going to be perceived as being ironic, but only by people who really think that the former is an improvement on the latter*…
Via: